Thursday, June 20, 2013

When Carl Taske, the narrator in David J. Schow’s
“Not From Around Here,” finds a monster curled up in bed beside his young
daughter Jilly, and is then unable to stop the monster from slowly eating her,
I realized Jilly was a totally undeveloped character, so in spite of my own
fatherhood, and the worry I daily experience for my own daughters, I wasn’t
horrified at all.

To a lesser extent, a similar problem occurs when
Taske’s wife Suzanne is eaten. Though Schow provides Suzanne a little backstory,
she is mainly a middle-aged wet-dream:

After bearing Jilly and dropping the surplus
weight of pregnancy, her ass and pelvis had resolved into a lascivious fullness
that I could not keep my hands away from for long….

Furthermore, she “Recently shed all
self-consciousness about sex…” and is nearly always naked or throwing on a robe
as she rushes around her new house.

The inability to write realized characters is an
oft-cited weakness of horror fiction authors. Schow, however, is able. Carl
Taske is likeable in spite of a host of flaws because he is fully self-aware.
He knows he’s a yuppy and he feels the attendant class guilt, he’s desperate to
please his wife and child, his temper gets the best of him, he’s afraid but
willing to do for his family, he accepts blame, he’s insecure, and he’s unsure
what to do with his success—it’s this uncertainty, he determines, that
imperiled his family. Taske’s neighbor, Dunwoody, who serves as a glimpse of
what Taske might become, is another sympathetic character. Maybe Schow just
doesn’t write women well.

When Dunwoody first meets Taske, Dunwoody asks a
series of very specific questions. Dunwoody wants to tell Taske something, but
is prevented—we understand later what prevents him. The second time they meet,
however, Dunwoody is free to speak, but rather than clearly explain to Taske that
he and his family is in danger, he’s cryptic and rude.

And that’s a cliché. The old man, addled by the
horrors he’s experienced, offers warnings no one would ever take seriously.
What if the old man simply told Taske everything, the instant the two had a
moment free? An interesting way to start a story—a real challenge to the
protagonist. Sir, I know you just bought this house, but there is a monster
here that mutilated my son and keeps me enslaved with its addictive venom. Here’s
proof.

The addictive venom is the reason Dunwoody doesn’t
warn Taske: Dunwoody is an addict. Addiction is the real horror in this story.
It explains—justifies—everything. Even the cliché.

“Not From Around Here” starts strong, then drags
to the end. Too much resolution for my taste. Schow’s macho persona interferes, too—Taske’s page-long
anecdote about losing it in middle school and beating up a bully is completely
unnecessary.

06.19.13

While reading for my Video Lies series, I came
across a 1993 review of X, Y that begins, “Michael Blumlein is best known in
the horror community for The Brains of Rats, widely acclaimed as one of the
most disturbing short story collections of the last few years “(Fangoria #130,
Don Kaye). Who is Michael Blumlein?

“Bestseller,” ultimately collected in The Brains
of Rats, is in the 1991 Year’s Best, and I admit I couldn’t finish it in one
sitting because it disturbed me so. Specifically, the narrator is an author
struggling to write in the face of his family’s growing economic desperation.
His wife is losing confidence in his work and so is he. Then—and this is when I
took my break—his son Nick is diagnosed with cancer and the doctors want to
amputate his leg. This is not maudlin—Blumlein is better than that. The
suffering of his characters is felt.

The weird of the tale is the arrangement the
narrator makes with a private organ farm, a deal he enters into wide-eyed, and
benefits from. The horror does not stem from forced harvesting, as it could,
but rather from how the narrator responds to the progressively aggressive procedures.
What the narrator becomes.

Briefly, “Bestseller” falls into a pattern that
slows the tale down, but I’m not sure this should be considered a problem. A
little lull is to be appreciated.

06.20.13

Susan Cooper’s essay “Fantasy in the Real World”—one
of Terri Windling’s selections for the Year’s Best—proposes that the United
States lacks the ritual that myth provides, and that this is the reason the
United States “falls into destructive violence” (Cooper is paraphrasing Joseph
Campbell, by way of Bill Moyers). Fantasy literature, she suggests, could
provide the myth the States lack, presumably creating order in our society and
putting an end to gun violence.

Cooper writes,

Great Britain is a fortunate country; there is a
great deal to be said for constitutional monarchy. The actual governing is all
done by a democratically elected Parliament; the monarch has no power at all,
but leads a benevolent and very public life as a figurehead, a focus for ritual
and emotion—a hero. Popularity is less important for a British prime minister
than for an American president, since in Britain the public can focus all its
adoration, all its hero-worship, upon the Queen—not to mention Prince Charles,
Princess Di, and the rest.

She explains that, “We are short of such figures
in the United States.” I don’t consider being without a preposterously entitled
figurehead a lack, but a virtue. “Who are our heroes?” she asks, and then
dismisses our heroes as either mere celebrities, or dead (she names John F.
Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr.), or possessed only of great talent,
intelligence, and great beauty—none of royalty.

The United States is not without myths—look to the
wild west—nor without heroes—legendary and otherwise. The great benefit of
heroes who are entrepreneurs, actors, athletes, musicians, politicians, etc.,
rather than royalty, is that it is
possible to not only emulate such heroes, but to become one yourself by
achievement.

Cooper abandons her central claim (fantasy is
really important) to conclude that “parents, teachers, librarians, authors,
publishers” must bring together “the right child and the right book.” She
explains:

The biggest truism of our professional lives is
that hugely important fact too many civilians still forget: every child should
be encouraged to read books, words on a page, for his or her own pleasure, in
his own time, dreaming his own—and the author’s—dream.

Originally a speech delivered at the New York
Library, I’m sure she delighted her audience, as I’m sure the essay gave
certain readers a sense of importance. It is, however, a mess. Condescending,
too.

Too bad, because I like very much that a couple of
non-fiction pieces made their way into The Year’s Best Fantasy & Horror series
(the other is Douglas Winter’s flawed essay “The Pathos of Genre” from the
thirteenth volume, which I criticized in New Genre #4); it suggests that
critical writing about fantasy and horror fiction, written by its
practitioners, is of value.

Tuesday, June 11, 2013

Ellen Datlow chose two stories by Jonathan Carroll
for inclusion in the 1991 edition of The Year’s Best Fantasy & Horror—“The
Panic Hand” and “The Sadness of Detail” (the latter, also chosen by Terri Windling,
the fantasy half of the series). (Stephen Jones and Ramsey Campbell took
Carroll’s “The Dead Love You” for their Best New Horror 2.)

I see a parallel between Carroll’s “The Sadness of
Detail” and T.E.D. Klein’s “Ladder”: both present an image of God, and while
Klein’s God is childishly cruel, Carroll’s is heartbreaking. There’s a whisper
of W. W. Jacob’s “The Monkey’s Paw”—but
it’s not anything like that story. I see a parallel between “The Sadness of
Detail” and Jack Womack’s “Out of Sight, Out of Mind”: the horror of
Alzheimer’s. Datlow and Windling placed “The Sadness of Detail” last in the
book, absolutely the right choice.

A reviewer for Kirkus compared Carroll to John
Collier and Saki. I’ll add Paul Bowels to that list. The same Kirkus review (of
the 1996 collection The Panic Hand) states, “Carroll's weaker stories are
slight and uninvolving, but his best are among the finest fantasies being
written today.” I’m suspicious of this kind of comment—it may be accurate—I
just made a similar remark about T.E.D. Klein—but it might also be a sign that
the reviewer failed to appreciate the more subtle stories in the collection. I
really don’t know—I haven’t read The Panic Hand.

I have, however, read “The Panic Hand.” Aside from
loving the title, high school Adam didn’t think much of this story. Maybe I
failed to understand that it’s about more than just a manipulative child
(manipulative on the scale of The Twilight Zone), but is also about a
pedophile. Or at least a pedophile in the making. Strip out that reading, and
we’re left with a fairly satisfying fantasy story; but as Carroll has it, the
story becomes horror. A fine illustration of the thin wall between genre.

06.11.13

Why collaborate to write a short story? This is
not a rhetorical question. I can’t think of many fiction collaborations that
generated work better than the work the authors write individually. Titus
Andronicus is not better than Othello. Maybe it’s better than The Battle of
Alcazar? I don’t know, though. Do chime in. I am currently collaborating with
Anna Eyre on a series of cantos called On Land, so I know how a poetic
collaboration of a certain type might work, that is, by treating the lines we
each produce as found text we can rearrange, erase, add too, etc. When I work
with Anna, authorship ceases to matter: it is we. And I love that.

I suppose with a fiction collaboration, as with a
collaboration in verse, you set up a system. In the case of Lucius Shepard and
Robert Frazier, I imagine Shepard was assigned to rough out the South American
setting, the sex scenes with the barely legal prostitute, and the descriptions
of psychotropic drug use. So what does that leave Frazier? The best scene in
“The All-Consuming”: the main character rests in a clearing deep in a toxic
future-jungle, surrounded by deadly flora and fauna, entranced by “a cloud
pool” and his surroundings:

Through gaps in the foliage, Arce could see the
slender trunks of other gargantuas rising above the canopy, vanishing into a
bank of low clouds. And in the middle distance, its translucent flesh barely
visible against the overcast, a rainbird flapped up from a stinger palm and
beat its way south against the prevailing wind. Acre watched it out of sight,
captivated by the almost impalpable vibration of its wings, by the entirety of
the scene, with its gaudy array of colors and exotic vitality. At times like
this, he was able to shrug off the bitter weight of his past for a few moments
and delight in the mystery he inhabited.

Nothing else in the story interests as much as
that description of replenishing solitude—a solitude so rich and satisfying as
to make the main character’s escape from this jungle at the end of the story
much less redemptive than it’s supposed to be. Oh and Arce? Arce is a terrible
name for a main character—is it meant to be read as “arch” or “are-say”? I read
it as “arse,” as in kiss my….

I’m a little surprised Datlow chose “The
All-Consuming”; the elements of horror are awfully mild. However, I appreciate
Datlow’s expansive take on horror—more than appreciate it: Datlow’s openness to
work that skirts the genre is a part of what made The Year’s Bests so important
to me in the early 1990s, when I was just beginning to read contemporary horror
fiction.

Sunday, June 9, 2013

During a panel at a fantasy convention Peter Straub
turned to me and said, “I know you! You’re New Genre.” I moderated the panel.
The subject was… oh I don’t remember. We were in the largest ballroom and it was packed with other weirdoes. Straub
sparkles at these conventions.

Typically, the “pros” who end up on panels never
prepare, but rely on wit they lack. Retread jokes. When I used to attend
conventions, whenever I was asked to participate on a panel, I prepared, often well
in advance. People pay sometimes hundreds of dollars for travel and admission. It’s
rude not to prepare. It’s arrogant.

In 2001, at a convention held in Manhattan, I
attended a panel about vampire lit. The assholes on stage knew nothing. Straub,
who was in the audience, raised his hand, ostensibly to make a small point, but
actually to rescue the idiot panelists. He shared insights he’d had while
rereading Bram Stoker’s Dracula in preparation for writing an introduction to a
new Modern Library edition. His talk was lively and enlightening.

Afterward, I asked him if he’d write a blurb for
New Genre. He did. When I mentioned this to someone else attending the
conference, they snickered about Straub tossing out blurbs left and right, but
I remained pleased; not just to have a blurb from Straub, but by the content of
the blurb:

In speaking to the need for new forums and a
greater seriousness, New Genre
is extremely welcome. I support the journal whole-heartedly.

“Greater
seriousness” is exactly New Genre. For that matter, if you haven’t already
sussed, greater seriousness is a mandate I bring to horror fiction generally,
not just via New Genre. That’s what makes me such humorless fun.

I haven’t read all of Straub’s short fiction, but
all I’ve read is good. “A Short Guide to the City” is good, without much in
terms of plot or resolution. I’ve only read pieces of the book the story’s from—Houses
Without Doors. I read “Blue Rose” in Dennis Etchison’s Cutting Edge anthology,
possibly when that anthology was published in 1987, and “The Juniper
Tree” in Douglas Winter’s Prime Evil anthology. Truthfully, I’ve read very
little of Straub’s work—I look forward to it.

Ellen Datlow introduces K.W. Jeter’s “The First
Time” as “brutal,” which is a mistake, because intended or no, that’s a dare,
and inevitably my first reaction was, Well it wasn’t that brutal. I’m not saying
Datlow is wrong, mind you, but best to find out for yourself.

“The First Time” is good, a story about a young
man brought by his father, his uncle, and their friends to a brothel that
provides a very unique service. Jeter is interested in the way men are taught
to use women. Especially effective is the image of a diagram charting the parts
of a woman’s body a Christian man is allowed to touch before marriage:

One time, when they’d been alone, she’d given him
a piece of paper that she’d had folded up in the back pocket of her jeans. The
paper had gotten shaped round, the same shape as he butt, and he’d felt funny
taking it an unfolding it…. You had to be engaged, with a ring and everything,
before you could unhook her bra. He’d kept the piece of paper, tucked in one of
his books at home. In a way, it’d been kind of a relief, just to know what was
expected of him.

This diagram becomes a talisman of sorts, though
in the end it’s only a bitter reminder of something lost.

Jeter’s story reminded me of Robert Aickman’s “The
Swords,” which actually takes a violent sexual awakening a lot further than “The
First Time,” in spite of Aickman’s choice to eschew gore.

Friday, June 7, 2013

I’m rereading fiction from The Year’s Best Fantasy
& Horror: Fourth Annual Collection (1991), edited by Ellen Datlow and Terri
Windling. The spine is broken at Jack Womack’s “Out of Sight, Out of Mind.” I
photocopied this story for a college professor who was willing to consider my
earnest insistence that contemporary horror fiction has literary worth. I’m no
longer sure Womack’s story is compelling evidence, I need to reread it, nor am
I so keen as I was to defend the genre.

T.E.D. Klein’s “Ladder” is included in the same
volume—I was surprised to come across a Klein story I didn’t remember. Klein is
the author of “The Events at Poroth Farm,” a story I love and frequently
reread. His collection of novellas, Dark Gods, is very good. I lost interest in
his novel The Ceremonies, an expansion of The Events at Poroth Farm, after just
a few chapters.

I didn’t remember “Ladder” because it isn’t very
good. Datlow wrote, in her brief introduction to the piece, “Usually more comfortable in the novella
length, Klein proves with ‘Ladder’ that he can produce equally powerful work in
a shorter length.” In fact, “Ladder” is an undeveloped conceit, tediously
explained in the last section.

Much is made of Klein’s small body of work; which
is why coming across a bad Klein story is especially disappointing. I can’t
help wonder what story wasn’t included in the ’91 Year’s Best to make room for
“Ladder.”

Typically in a year’s best—any year’s best, genre
or otherwise—I find only a few stories that are excellent. The Year’s Best
Fantasy & Horror averaged about five per volume. That’s out of about fifty
stories. Half that if we consider just horror. In the Fourth Annual, I only
remember a couple. Elizabeth Massie’s “Stephen” and the Womack. As I reread,
I’ll remember more, and maybe discover work high school Adam wasn’t ready to
appreciate.

06.03.13

Adrian Cole telegraphs too much in “Face to Face.”
Throughout, the protagonist notes his disappearing features in a mirror, so
when we’re told why and sort-of-how, there’s no surprise—for that matter, the
why is unsurprising as well. The weakest moment comes when the protagonist
discovers the whorls on his fingers gone, “There was nothing there, as though
every line, every crease, had been wiped off.” His reaction? “I need a good
sleep, he thought. It came easily.” Come on.

The story is not without its strengths. Cole moves
from one character’s point of view to another, in third person, effectively
(though ultimately to little purpose; this is a story that would be immediately
improved by changing p.o.v. to the first). The last scene, during which the
protagonist observes a surgery performed by a robot, is tense and successfully
ghastly. Not enough of a payoff, however. “Face to Face” is a story with no
real resonance, regardless of the anxieties—computers and robots reducing humankind
to parts, corporate evil, loss of identity—that are its subjects.

Nina Kiriki Hoffman’s “Coming Home” takes a very
simple premise—an adult returns to the house haunted by a childhood horror—and
makes it complex with two generations of children in foster care, all in the midst
of their difficult childhoods, a carefully drawn and unique house, and numerous
ghosts. Time gets lost. Atmosphere is all.

06.07.13

Both The Year’s Best and its English counterpart,
Stephen Jones and Ramsey Campbell’s Best New Horror, reprinted Thomas Ligotti’s
“The Last Feast of Harlequin” for their 1991 editions (K.W. Jeter’s “The First
Time,” Peter Straub’s “A Short Guide to the City,” and Massie’s “Stephen” the others
that overlap). “The Last Feast of Harlequin” is reminiscent of H.P. Lovecraft's "The Shadow Over Innsmouth," but takes direct inspiration from Lovecraft's "The Festival" (thanks to John Magwitch--see comments), while also making reference to Edgar Allan Poe’s
poem “The Conqueror Worm” (and more subtly references Poe when the narrator of
Ligotti’s story describes Mirocaw, the city in which the events of the story
take place. The description is fairly long and very detailed, a la Poe’s
description of the Usher family manse).

“The Last Feast of Harlequin” is about a seasonal
affective disorder that encapsulates all the grief of humanity, a subject of
particular interest to Ligotti, who believes humankind would be best off
extinct, as he explains in an interview with Michael Gottert:

My interest in the discontinuance of our race is
extinction for humanity’s sake, a putting an end to human suffering as soon as
possible. This can be accomplished only be putting an end to our species as
soon as possible.

His philosophy strikes me as silly, but nonetheless I may need to revisit Ligotti. I read his first
collection, Songs of a Dead Dreamer, and found it alternately brilliant and
exhausting. That may be the intended affect.

Generally, in stories about freaks, the freaks are
not the monsters.* Even in Tod Browning’s Freaks, shocking to us now because
actual circus freaks were cast, the freaks are not the monsters—the moral
lesson too obvious to be worth repeating. In spite of this nod to compassion,
these stories are always themselves freak shows, indulging in a morbid
fascination with mental and physical aberration. This is certainly true of
Nancy A. Collins “Freaktent,” which contributes little (maybe nothing?) new to
the circus sideshow sub-genre. The implications of the twist—predictable except
in its details—are undoubtedly horrific, as is the notion that people with
extreme birth-defects or extreme illnesses might become a commodity, but the balance
is off, emphasizing the gross-out over corruption.

*Can anyone name stories or films in which the
circus freaks are the monsters?

This quote, from an interview with Ellen Datlow conducted in 1997 by Dave Truesdale, caught my attention:

Newer writers seduced into writing in the Star
Wars, Star Trek, etc. universes get stuck in the cycle of easy money for little
work and this stunts their literary growth by discouraging them from creating
their own worlds. I know this sounds harsh but I feel this short-sighted trend
is destroying the future of sf and fantasy, creatively and also in the
marketplace. By encouraging it, book publishers are flooding the market with
movie/tv/game spinoffs, debasing the coin of the realm in readers' eyes.

What “newer writers” did Datlow have in mind?
Nancy A. Collins made me think of Datlow’s criticism, but Collins didn’t do any
tie-in work till the mid-nineties, and those were comic books—a different
beast. Most of the authors I know who do tie-in work—Elizabeth Hand and Brian
Evenson, for instance—made reputations for themselves before taking on such
work. I guess I wouldn’t know the names of authors who mainly write tie-in
work.

(I declined an invitation to write a story for a
tie-in anthology. I was at first pleased to be asked, but I grew quickly uneasy
with the job.)

Datlow’s quote is uncharacteristically idealistic
for a professional earning a living by publishing horror and science fiction.
She urges young writers to pass up “easy money” for the sake of their “literary
growth.” So often at the conventions such professionals attend, and in their
writing about writing, there is a disdain for such idealism. That one might
write for intangible reasons, and choose to publish in markets one respects
regardless of pay, is characterized as foolish.